Exmouth

Who would have thought me swimming with the biggest fish in the sea… the whale shark!

Ben let me have the day off – and eagerly booked me in for a day cruise and swim with the whale sharks – a real tourist thing to do here in Exmouth.  He in turn took the children to a water park, dive shop followed by an afternoon in the caravan park pool.  Sam was utterly disappointed that mum was away for the day and school work was in not on the cards.

Great day (good food, great boat…) where I, along with a few other nervous participants jumped in the water at the call of the spotter “Go Go Go!!!”  After some initial fumbling around (which is to be expected when 7 people jump into the unknown depth of water on top of each other... ) we spotted the whale shark – around 6m long and swam our little legs off trying to keep up with it.  I have to admit after that first exhausting effort, I wondered what I had got myself into.  But, thankfully, the following 4 whale sharks we jumped in to see were slow, gentle and absolutely graceful.  They allowed us to swim at a good pace beside them, and occasionally turned around to see us quickly panicking to get out of their way.  The last whale shark spotting of the day was particularly special.  We were following and admiring one whale shark, when suddenly I heard a voice yelling “shark”.  Up goes my head to look around, along with another female swimmer who was close by.  “Did someone say shark? What kind of shark?”  In the excitement of the moment, they had forgotten to clarify that it was another whale shark – and now there were two together. A flurry of activity as we all tried to stay clear of them while taking in the moment.

see our legs?